Porta Palazzo: The Anthropology of an Italian Market

232 Pages·2012·2.31 MB·English

by  Rachel E. Black

Porta Palazzo
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CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY
Series Editors
Kirin Narayan
Alma Gottlieb
A complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
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Porta Palazzo
The Anthropology of an Italian Market
RACHEL E. BLACK
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
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Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or
scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means
without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Black, Rachel, 1975–
Porta Palazzo : the anthropology of an Italian market / Rachel E. Black. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Contemporary ethnography)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4406-9 (alk. paper)
1. Porta Palazzo (Market : Turin, Italy) 2. Markets—Italy—Turin—Sociological
aspects. 3. Grocery trade—Social aspects—Italy—Turin. 4. Grocery shopping—
Social aspects—Italy—Turin. 5. Turin (Italy)—Social conditions. 6. Black, Rachel,
1975—Homes and haunts—Italy—Turin. I. Title. II. Series: Contemporary
ethnography.
HF5474.I82B535 2012
381'.4564130945121—dc23 2011050014
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To my mother, Rebecca, for sharing her love of
food, cooking, and gardening. You are a constant
inspiration to me.
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contents
Foreword by Carlo Petrini ix
Introduction: Going to Market 1
1. The Market as a Field 13
2. The Evolution of a Market 25
3. A Neighborhood, a Square, and a Market 46
4. Fare la spesa: Shopping, Morality, and Anxiety at the Market 65
5. Il Ventre di Torino: Migration and Food 93
6. Kumalé: Ethnogastronomic Tourism 119
7. Nostrano: The Farmers’ Market, Local Food, and Place 140
Conclusion: La Piazza—City, Public Space, and Sociability 169
Afterword: Porta Palazzo Market and Urban Renewal 177
Notes 183
Bibliography 191
Index 213
Acknowledgments 221
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foreword
Carlo Petrini
The novelist Giovanni Arpino, like myself a native of Bra in the northwest-
ern Italian region of Piedmont, once wrote that, paradoxically, Turin, the
capital of our region, is “the most southern of Italian cities.” He was refer-
ring to the fact that, as a result of the employment-related internal migra-
tion of the 1950s and 1960s, a huge population of the city consisted of people
from Calabria, Sicily, Puglia, and so on.
Today I would go farther and argue that, thanks to more recent immigra-
tion from North Africa and the Middle East, of all the major European cities
not actually on the sea, Turin is the most Mediterranean. I say this largely be-
cause it is a city of markets. Most of its quarters hold large, sprawling open-air
affairs every day of the week. Historically speaking, I like to think of markets
as links between different realities. It was thanks to them that, for centuries,
the civilizations that sprang up along the shores of the Mediterranean met
and melded. Mediterranean civilization would never have grown as rich and
complex as it is without its markets, meeting places but also venues in which
goods, culture, and knowledge were and are exchanged.
Today traditional markets not only are of strictly economic importance
but also have a clear social and urban significance. Often they are the mirror
of the local context in which they are immersed.
The largest of all Turin’s markets, known popularly as Porta Palazzo, is
held in the city’s central and enormous Piazza della Repubblica. It is said to
be the largest open air market in Europe—that’s just the fruit and vegetable
section!—and is encircled at the northern end by the baroque architecture
of Filippo Juvarra, not a local but a Sicilian from Messina.
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